styrene

woody hydrocarbon

Found in 121 ingredients across the CompKitchen flavor graph.

Look up another compound — search by name, CAS number, PubChem CID, or FEMA #.

2D Lewis Structure

Formula: C8H8
Molecular weight: 104.15 g/mol
PubChem CID: 7501 — full record on PubChem

Properties

Odor description: balsamic, gasoline
Odor threshold — orthonasal, in clean water: 730 ppb 1 published value · see all 6 with sources
Volatility: high
CAS number: 100-42-5
Retention index: 898

Regulatory · United States

FEMA GRAS — Generally Recognized As Safe for flavoring use

✓ Exact match

FEMA number: 3233
GRAS publication: GRAS 4
FEMA primary name: STYRENE

Use-level matrix not extracted for this substance — check the source publication for current ppm guidance.

Source: FEMA GRAS publications 1-33.

How this molecule is described

Sources disagree about odour more often than they disagree about chemistry. Rather than show one answer, here is every description on file with how many ingredient records carry it.

Descriptions on file

Ordered by how many independent descriptor streams give each wording, then by how often it appears. The bar is still replication — one source copied onto many ingredients scores high there — so the two can disagree.

balsamic, gasoline shown above Flavornet Cas, Flavornet Name, FlavorDB 2.0, Flavordb Odor Column 4 sources agree

balsam, balsamic, floral, gasoline, plastic, sweet FlavorDB 2.0

105

almond FlavorDB 2.0

unpleasant FlavorDB 2.0

positive aroma FlavorDB 2.0

Bars are the share of ingredient records carrying each description. High agreement means the sources replicate each other — not necessarily that they are right.

Published thresholds

6 measured values from the literature. Grouped by what was actually measured — a threshold smelled in clean water, tasted in the mouth, or measured in a real food are three different quantities and are not pooled.

Orthonasal, in clean water

730 ppb

The reference measurement — smelled in water. OAV is computed against this.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
730 ppb	water_odor	Leffingwell	—

In a food matrix

7.6 ppb – 55.1 ppb

Measured in a real food, where the matrix shifts detection — not a clean-water value.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
7.6 ppb	water (food: tea)	Literature corpus	31861730
10.9 ppb SIDA	water (food: unknown)	Literature corpus	32625638, 27347408, 27664650 +14
55.1 ppb	water (food: rice)	Literature corpus	29877224, 35424932

In air

35.0 ppb – 50.1 ppb

Airborne detection — not comparable to a water threshold.

Threshold	Matrix	Source	Paper
35.0 ppb	air	Nagata 2003	—
50.1 ppb	air (HS_hellman_small)	Cometto-Muñiz (PMC)	—

Only values we can attribute are listed. Where a compendium's licence does not permit public attribution its figures are omitted here, so every number on this page traces to a citable source.

Where you'd actually smell it

Odor Activity Value = measured concentration ÷ odor threshold (33.036249999999995 ppb, the engine's canonical value — see the 6 published values). OAV ≥ 1 = perceptible.

Food	Concentration (ppb)	OAV	Source
rice	88.0	2.66	Corpus paper
yogurt desserts	23.0	0.70	Corpus paper
fresh cheese	22.4	0.68	Corpus paper
tea	11.0	0.33	Corpus paper

Concentrations from PubMed Central Open Access papers (free literature corpus, MIT-style licensed). Copper = OAV ≥ 10 (strongly perceptible). Green = OAV ≥ 1 (perceptible).

Found in

Measured impact first, then profile share

Every ingredient known to contain styrene. Ingredients with a measured concentration come first, ranked by odour activity; the rest follow by how large a share of that ingredient's profile this molecule is. The figure beside each is how many different compounds that ingredient has in total — not the concentration of styrene in it. Full concentrations are in the OAV table above.

432 cmpds

617 cmpds

12 cmpds

19 cmpds